Component Buying

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Hello there, another big time lurker coming out of the wood work to ask yet another question.

Where the hell does everyone buy their PC parts?

I'm pretty sure online is cheaper and I want to buy brand new so I know all are good working parts.
However there's just thousands of sites to wade through. Is this the best way? Going through all of them trying to find the best deal for each component?

Or are there some recommended sites that are good? I don't mind paying that bit extra to get a decent delivery/service (instead of hunting for deals) and be able to keep all my order tracking in one "location."




Ok, I'm a blind idiot, can someone delete this thread

 

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Hi Coma toast,
I buy most of my stuff from http://www.ebuyer.com/ or http://www.overclockers.co.uk/. It depends who's the cheapest at the time I place the order.

HTH
NB

 

I'm trying to build a good but basic/budget, what do people think of the following? Are there any glaring problems? Any feedback greatly appreciated!

CPU- Intel Core 2 Duo E4600 Socket 775 2.4GHz (800MHz) L2 2MB Cache Retail Boxed Processor
Case & PSU- Coolermaster Elite 330 Black Case With CM eXtreme Power 460W PSU
Motherboard- Asus P5B Socket Lga775 Core 2 Duo Intel P965 Fsb1066 8gb Ddr2 Sata 300 Gigabit Lan 8chn Audio
Optical Drive- LG GSA-H55NBAL 20x DVD±RW/DL/RAM IDE Black Bare Drive - OEM
HDD- Maxtor STM3250310AS 250GB SATAII 8MB Cache - OEM
RAM- Kingston 2GB Kit (2x1GB) DDR2 800MHz/PC2-6400 Memory Non-ecc CL5 Unbuffered 1.8V

I can't decide on Graphic Cards though-

ASUS 8600GT 256MB GDDR3 Dual DVI HDTV out PCI-E Graphics Card
XFX 8600GT 256MB DDR3 540MHz Core Clock 2xDVI PCI-E Graphics Card

 

Seems ok to me for a budget build, as for the graphics card I'd go for the Asus one.

 

Ebuyer, Dabs, Scan, Misco are all fairly good and very competetive on price. I'm sure many people have horror stories with customer services at any of the ones mentioned. I have had some crap service in the past, but generally I would still recommend any of them.

As for what you have picked, looks good to me. It may however be worth checking on the Asus website (or googling it) if the P5B will take that ram ok. It's a great motherboard and has some very good overclocking features, but it's also got a reputation of being fussy about what ram you put in it.

I bought that board recently along with some OCZ DDR2-800 ram and XP wouldn't install properly. Crashed at several different stages during setup. After I upped the voltage on the ram it was fine and dandy. Apparently it doesn't always read the correct values from the SPD on the ram, which is what caused the problem in my case.

One other tip, I'd get a Sata DVD writer if I were you and not an IDE. I just got a 20x writer from ebuyer for £16.00. The reason I recommend this is the IDE connector is quite far down the board on the P5B (even worse on the P5K) so it's far easier to connect up Sata drives than anything IDE. A long IDE cable would be fine though if you have one.

Also the IDE controller is a seperate from the main Sata controller (it's a JMicron controller) and I found my system unstable for pushing the FSB past 290Mhz when it was enabled. If you aren't going to be overlocing it at all, or just a little you will be fine.

Final point, if you are putting Vista on the above Mobo, then it should be fine. XP however requires extra drivers in order to recognise either the intel sata controller or the JMicron if you want to use them in high speed mode. You can run both controllers in compatibility mode, but you will be losing performance from the hard disk.

Couple of ways to get round this. Using the F6 to specify additional devices and provide a floppy with the drivers on. Or slipstream the intel matrix drivers into the XP install.

 

i would have to agree with gbl on that but if you could i would go for the 512mb version.

 

I have the Asus and MSI (256MB) versions of that card with both I can run Crysis (which is very demanding game) at 1024 x 768 and medium settings on everything and texture detail on high, I don't get any stutters but I do have 3GB of RAM installed.

Edit I am not running sli but may do in the future.

 

Found a guide I used to slipstream the Intel Matrix drivers into the XP install if anyone needs it.

http://www.msfn.org/board/Integration-Intel-Sata-Raid-drivers-t107504.html

 

Thanks for all the info Modey.

Why exactly won't the RAM work with that motherboard? What am I looking for, the speeds seem to match up?
I was planning on running XP, thanks for the heads up on getting the SATA performance.

 

I didn't say the ram won't work, just that the P5B can be fussy about the ram that's put into it. I don't know if you would have a problem with that particular Kingston ram or not.

The speed of the ram would only be an issue if you intend to overclock the system agressively and want the ram to be able to take the higher FSB speeds. Also the more you spend on the ram, the tighter you can make the timings without instability beginning to creep in.

Like I said, do a google for using Kingston ram with the P5B and see if it turns anything up. Asus also have some tech forums that might be worth checking out. I doubt you will have a problem though, Kingston is fairly standard ram.

 

alternativley you can visit here http://www.crucial.com/uk/?gclid=CP-1zpjtrZECFRuzEAodeD9PXw and see what speeds that mobo takes.

 

The speed of the ram is not really at issue, it's wether it's compatible.

 

Hi,
Like GBL suggested, have a look at crucial.com and pick your motherboard from the list and see what memory is available for it. It might even be cheaper from crucial and at the mo it's free shipping.

HTH
NB

 

I would suggest a graphics card from BFG, ive got the 8600 and im happy with mine. It also comes with a lifetime warranty.

 

One thing I would add about some of the cheaper GFX cards. More ram doesn't usually give you any extra benefit and often it's slower ram than on the cards with half the amount. The 8600 is an ok card (for the money) but it wouldn't ever use 512MB of ram unless it was running at high resolutions and if ti was, it would be like looking at a flip book in terms of frame rate.

So ther extra 256MB may be beconing to you, but igore it's siren's call. Or at least look at benchmarks that compare the 256MB 8600 to the 512MB version.

 

Thanks again for the info, I'd heard 512mb isn't always better, it's good to have it explained exactly why.

I'm also not planning on any overclocking on this system, so I should be okay. Cheers again. Lets hope it all works.

 

Was working on a P5B system today Coma, it listed Kingston ram as one of it's compatible modules. It was a specific module, but still sounds like Kingston may work ok on it.